Spinal cord stimulation using differential target multiplexed programming modulates neural cell-specific transcriptomes in an animal model of neuropathic pain

This study investigates how different spinal cord stimulation (SCS) methods affect gene expression in specific types of neural cells in rats with neuropathic pain. It compares a new method called differential target multiplexed programming (DTMP) with traditional high-rate (HRP) and low-rate (LRP) stimulation. The researchers examined genes (transcriptomes) from neurons, microglia, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes to see how each SCS treatment changed their expression compared to untreated animals. They looked for correlations between gene expression patterns produced by each SCS treatment and those of healthy animals. The study found that DTMP showed strong correlations with the gene expression levels of healthy animals across all cell types. HRP only showed a strong correlation for microglia, while LRP did not show strong correlations for any cell types.

• 1
  DTMP yielded strong and significant correlations to expression levels found in the healthy animals across every evaluated cell-specific transcriptome.
• 2
  High rate programming only yielded a strong correlation for the microglia-specific transcriptome
• 3
  Low rate programming did not yield strong correlations with any cell types.